The Rules of Business: Fast Company’s Editors and Writers
Steps to driving change
Build the team
Get the vision right
Communicate for buy-in
Empower action
Create short-term wins
Don’t give up in the face of setbacks
Make the changes stick
“Last year, each of our 10 million customers came in contact with approximately five SAS employees, and this contact lasted an average of 15 seconds each time. Those 50 million “moments of truth” are the moments that ultimately will determine whether SAS will succeed or fail as a company.” Jan Carlzon, CEO, Scandinavian Airlines
How to make decisions:
Framing; deciding what you are going to decide—and not decide
Gathering intelligence; facts and data that will support internal biases
Coming to conclusions; acting on the intelligence you gather
Learning from experience; the only thing worse than not knowing how to make a decision is having to make the same decision over and over again.
“A half-baked strategy well executed will be superior to that marvelous strategy that isn’t executed very well.” Allan Gilmour, vice chairman Ford
“Execution is the ability to mesh strategy with reality, align people with goals, and achieve the promised results.” Larry Bossidy, CEO Honeywell
“Hold people accountable. Reward those who execute. Coach those who don’t. And if they still don’t get it, fire them. You aren’t helping them, or the organization, by having them stick around.”
4 elements required to execute efficiently:
Be clear about what you want to accomplish.
Match people to the task at hand.
Make sure they buy in.
Keep them fired up (make sure they “own” the new initiative)
“No matter how overwhelmed you are with work, it is always better to hire no one than to hire the wrong person. It sounds so basic, but the rule is violated every day everywhere—with disastrous results.”
“A players hire A players, B players hire C players, and C players hire losers. Let your standards slip once and you’re only two generations away from death.”
“Nothing demotivates people like the equal treatment of unequals. When you hire a bozo and treat him the same as a rock star, it deflates the rock star.” Joe Kraus, founder and CEO, JotSpot
“When it comes to training and performance reviews, I think we have our priorities reversed. Shouldn’t we spend more time trying to improve the performance of our stars? After all, these people account for a disproportionately large share of the work in any organization. Put another way, concentrating on the stars is a highly leveraged activity; if they get better, the impact on group output is very large indeed.” Andy Grove, chairman, Intel
“Don’t have your people waste time figuring out what someone else in the company has already discovered. Create and maintain an efficient knowledge management system to share experiences companywide. By some estimates, up to 70% of what workers do is nothing more than reinventing a wheel that their organization has discovered earlier.”
“Leadership is the art of getting people to do what you want because they want to.
“Leadership is about making a vision happen.”
5 Reasons why leaders succeed:
They know where they want to go; clear vision
They know who is going to help them get there; they get the right people on the bus
They make sure those people understand; they get buy in
They make sure those people have the tools; equip and empower
